Domestic Goddess

Perhaps the title of this post is misleading. As I’ve confessed in previous posts, I’m not the perfect housekeeper. Nancy Thorne, my darling mother, is – but I, her wayward daughter, don’t replace the shower curtain liner nearly as often as I should, nor the A.C. filters, nor even the smoke alarm battery… le sigh. How I wish I had her knack for maintaining a nest that honors her husband, reflects her passions (food, color, comfort, cleanliness, etc.), and welcomes others.

About once a month, however, something crazy happens. Be it hormones, out-of-town guests, or something else (in this case, roaches), I kick it into full “domestic goddess” mode, and I clean the entire house from top to bottom.

Two of my least favorite chores are cleaning the floors (I don’t mind vacuuming, but mopping and sweeping I detest) and putting new sheets on the bed. I don’t mind WASHING the sheets – I just hate that awful ordeal of figuring out which way the fitted sheet is supposed to go, tucking in the flat sheet, putting the pillow covers on and then remembering which pillow was Brad’s and which one was mine – ugh. What chores do you dread?

Anyway, I found two roaches in my bathroom within about six hours of each other. I killed one that had gotten into the bathtub and couldn’t climb out… I keep a can of Raid in my powder room at all times… and then I returned later in the day to discover the dead roach’s twin mourning his loss over the other roach’s carcass. The Raid was not taking effect on him as quickly as I wanted, so he quickly met his fate at the blunt edge of the Raid can.

(NB: I think I'm getting back into the swing of this blogging thing. I realized this as I was watching the first roach die, and I thought "I should take a video of this for my blog!" Clearer thoughts prevailed and I realized how disgusting that would be.)

This got me thinking. Granted, I live in an old house in a historic neighborhood – and this IS Texas, so there are bound to be roaches – but perhaps it’s time for an all-out scrub-down.

I keep my kitchen clean because I’m a bit paranoid about germs and I bake a lot (again, see here). So I figured I would ease myself into the cleaning madness and start with my cleanest room, the kitchen, and just make it that much cleaner. Check out my awesomely organized fridge:

And freezer (is this beginning to feel like an MTV Cribs episode?):

And my personal fav, the pantry:

I hope you noticed the vase full of limes and lemons on the top shelf of the fridge. I thought that was a nice, Stepford-esque touch. I’m very into room temperature water, no ice, with limes these days. I feel like it does wondrous things for my insides. Maybe it doesn't.

I also arranged a really lovely bowl of fruit. The vessel is a copper paella pan my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday. Really gorgeous! And the mix of bananas, Golden Delicious and Granny Smith apples, studded with black plums and cherries, makes for a pretty spread. I feel like the darker fruits look like little jewels of amethyst and onyx against the citron backdrop:

And with some mood lighting (I'm not as good a photog as Abby!):

Now onto other rooms of the house. Today I’ll focus on the den, formal living room, and my bathroom. The office I tend to stay out of because that’s Brad’s mad scientist lab and there’s no point in picking it up. The guest room is storing some extra furniture, so it’s not worth trying to make that room look pretty until we unload the excess at my little bro’s apartment. The master I tend to keep pretty picked-up. A girl’s gotta have a decent place to dress herself, right?

Look for more photos of the clean house later. :-)